Thursday, August 10, 2017

Putin’s ‘Young Technocrats’ Aren’t Technocrats But a Sign of Regime’s Lack of Any Ideas, Krasheninnikov Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 9 – Russian political
discourse frequently gives new meaning to words in common use elsewhere, Fyodor
Krasheninnikov says. Since the start of 2017, it has talked a lot about “young
technocrats” who are not technocrats but rather a symptom of the vacuum of
ideas at the top of the country’s political system.

The Kremlin uses the term “young
specialist” to designate a group of former governors who have been assigned to
head regions or simply young governors who have been in office for a long time
but are relatively young, the Yekaterinburg political analyst says. But they
are not technocrats (snob.ru/selected/entry/127756).

With rare
exceptions, these people have worked in the political system most or all of
their lives and thus are not the technocrats in the usual sense. But
identifying the cadres in this way allows the Kremlin to answer the question as
to why they have been appointed and also to suggest that the regime is moving
forward by focusing on technical effectiveness.

Moreover, the term suggests that
these people are “apolitical,” a positive thing in two ways. On the one hand,
that suggests to many people that these people aren’t pursuing any agenda.And on the other, it means that the regime
can count on them to obey any future twist and turn in the Kremlin line.

In many ways, Krasheninnikov says,
this represents a recapitulation of the practice adopted at the end of Soviet
times when leaders chose younger people whom they believed were effective
because they weren’t ideologically committed to any one position. Mikhail
Gorbachev was thought to be one of these, and in the Russian Federation later,
Vladimir Putin.

This reliance on technocrats,” the
analyst continues, “is a sign of self-complacency of a collapsing political
system,” one that signals that there has been a loss of faith in the previous
ideological and political arrangements but no identification of new ones in
which younger people can place their faith.

Given “the unqualified dominance of the
federal government in all spheres and the emptiness of regional budgets, there
is no real reason to expect miracles from any of the Kremlin-backed promotions:
these people will hardly take any risks” by challenging the party line from
above.

But this arrangement doesn’t always
work as its creators expect, Krasheninnikov says. Some of these young people
may decide to break with their elders if they fear that otherwise they will
share the same fate. That happened at the end of Soviet times, and it could
easily and unexpectedly quickly happen once again.